Review: King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match Delivers Knockout Action

The King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match doesn’t promise much beyond a nostalgic 2-D fighting experience, but it certainly packs a wallop.

The cumbersome name deserves an explanation. After publisher SNK Playmore stopped producing annual editions of its premier fighting-game franchise, it kept King of Fighters in the public eye by revamping older games in the series. Thus, this is not a 2002-vintage game but a 2009 remake of it.

If you’re following along, that means that this Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title, released Nov. 3, is a port of a port of an upgrade of an 8-year-old game, and one that certainly looks its age. While you have numerous options to tweak the game’s graphics, they boil down to two basic choices: blocky pixels or smeared colors.

What the game lacks in visual polish, it attempts to make up for in sheer volume. There are a mind-boggling 66 characters to choose from in Ultimate Match, and even though there are more than a few clones (sometimes literally) on the roster, this is still a staggering number of options.

These characters brim with personality. The game may not have a story, but a bevy of pre-fight animations add depth to the experience. For example, whenever rivals Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami face off, a unique pre-fight animation plays in which they hold their burning hands aloft and talk smack. The fact that I’m not entirely sure what they’re saying doesn’t make their showdown any less cool.

Contrast that with Ryu and Ken in Street Fighter IV who, despite having a lengthy history with each other, say and do exactly the same things before their matches regardless of their opponent.

Speaking of which, I find the King of Fighters four-button layout to be much better suited to a standard Xbox 360 controller than Street Fighter‘s six-button array. By having all the attack buttons on the face of the controller, the shoulder buttons are freed up for for handy commands like dodging and knock-back blows.

One button can be used as the “Command” button — a fully programmable hot key that can execute a sequence of inputs in an instant. This means that even advanced techniques like Clark’s Rolling Sphere, a move so complicated that you earn an Achievement for pulling it off in battle, can be mapped to a single button.

The game saves one Command entry per character, so you won’t have to reprogram it each time you start a new game or try a new fighter.

The downside to the Command button is that, much like the rest of the game, there are virtually no instructions to explain how it works. While the game’s menus are fairly straightforward, Ultimate Match practically revels in its obtuseness.

It does have a list of each character’s moves — but if you don’t already know what the difference between a DM and an SDM is, you will find this information to be inscrutable.

The game’s Challenge mode is particularly infuriating in this regard, since the very goals of each challenge are often confusing. Challenge No. 11 asks me to do a combo involving a “medium jump.” I have yet to figure out what that is.

Yet the rough edges of these bonus features should not detract from the main event: The King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match is an exceptional fighting game. The team-based combat emphasizes strategy over quick reflexes. For each bout, you select three characters, who then appear one at a time in order. There are no mid-match character swapping or pop-in, pop-out assist moves.

Older videogames, particularly fighting games, often struggle when it comes to accessibility. There’s a steep learning curve to understanding the “language” of the genre, and this can be intimidating to newcomers. The King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match offers no olive branch here — with so many options, first-time players will likely have no idea where to begin. However, fighting games excel at rewarding player investment, and if you’re willing to put in the time and give Ultimate Match a chance, you will not be disappointed.